Western Libraries will host a talk by professor and author Geoffrey Turnovsky entitled "Permanent Ink: Why We Still Love Print in the Digital Age." This free, public event will take place on Wednesday, April 29, 2026, at 4 p.m. in the Wilson 4 Central Reading Room.

We once depended on handwriting for recording information. Then the printing press changed everything. We could record, store, and access information in thousands of copies. Five hundred years later, the digital revolution is transforming things again. Today, we get information from millions of websites in milliseconds with search engines and AI.

Technology has always shaped the way we've stayed informed, expressed ourselves, and stayed connected as communities. What lessons do earlier technologies, like print, hold for us today in the age of AI and digital overload? And why, despite the speed and convenience of newer technologies, is print more popular than ever?

At the end of the talk, audiences will get the chance to try printing on a portable press.

Geoffrey Turnovsky is professor of French at the University of Washington. His teaching and research focus on the cultural history of early modern France and Europe, and the history of print, books, authorship, and reading. He is the author of Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France. He lives in Seattle.

This talk is co-sponsored by Western Libraries, the Critical A.I. Literacies Collective, and Western's departments of Art & Art History, Global Humanities & Religions, History, and Linguistics. It is being offered as part of the Archives & Special Collections Distinguished Speaker Series and the Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau.

This event is intended for all participants, including those with apparent or non-apparent disabilities. For more information or for disability accommodation(s) (such as ASL interpretation, etc.) please contact Ruth Steele, CPNWS Archivist and Interim Director of Archives & Special Collections, [email protected], (360) 650-7747. Advance notice is appreciated and sometimes necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.